The invention relates to apparatus for manipulating elongated webs of flexible material, such as exposed and developed photographic roll films which are ready for copying.
A copying machine in which the apparatus of the present invention can be put to use is disclosed in commonly owned U.S. Pat. No. 4,627,719 to Nitsch et al. The patented copying machine is provided with a first magazine which can receive a roll of convoluted photographic film, and a film channel which can receive the leader of the convoluted film. A transporting mechanism is used to advance the film in stepwise fashion through the channel and into a second magazine wherein the film is convoluted to form a second roll. The film is monitored during transport from the first toward the second magazine, and successive frames of the film are copied during transport from the second magazine back into the first magazine. The copying operation is carried out in dependency on the results of the monitoring operation.
Insertion of the film into the first magazine takes up a substantial amount of time because the film must be convoluted to form a roll which can fit into the magazine. The convoluting operation is carried out by hand, and the person in charge must be careful not to scratch or otherwise damage the film.
In accordance with another prior proposal, the leader of the film is introduced into the channel and the film is permitted to hand ahead of the inlet to the channel. In other words, the first magazine is omitted. This simplifies the task of introducing the leader of the film into the channel and renders it possible to dispense with the step of convoluting the film. However, the table on which the channel is mounted in normally approximately 80 cm above the floor level. On the other hand, the length of a standard No. 135 film (35 mm wide with perforations along both marginal portions and with 36 film frames) is approximately 150 cm. Therefore, a portion of the film which simply hangs down in front of the channel slides along the floor and is likely to be contaminated and/or otherwise adversely affected prior to monitoring and subsequent copying.